Films at the Lab Films at the Lab

Sunday, July 8, 2012, 8 pm–10 pm

This selection of recent short films from Germany captures the energy of urban life and contemplates how we perceive and experience the urban landscape. Using a variety of techniques and modes of storytelling, these experimental documentaries take us on a selective tour through the contemporary urban landscape, revealing latent narratives and hidden views.

The first film will be Reise Zum Wald (Journey to the Forest), a playful meditation on the distinction between natural and artificial landscapes, followed by Zielpunkte der Stadt (Urban Poem), which melds images from twenty German cities into a continuous landscape, revealing the compression and density of urban space.

Demo_lition reminds us that the city is a set of forces and a process of continual construction and destruction. Combining images of demolition sites with voice-overs by displaced residents, the film creates a new space of contemplation. Die Gute Lage (The Best Location) takes us inside the apartments of a satellite city, and creates a landscape of domestic space in a single continuous shot. City West Revisited takes us to the former center of West Berlin and compares archival material from the 1970s and ’80s with contemporary views shot in the same locations.

The program closes with Berlin, a cinematic love letter to the city in the style of a home movie. Shot over the course of two years, this urban portrait shows us the city as a series of lived experiences at different speeds, and offers a street-level view of the city’s social space.